Mackenzie's+Essential+Question+2

Though I grew up being aware of the power and importance of code-switching, it never seemed as urgent and important to me prior to teaching. Before, I understood that language differs based on where you are and who you are around. To me, this boiled down to professional/academic language, friend/peer language, and parents/superiors language. Something that I understood but didn’t realize the entire weight of was the effect culture, race and class has on code-switching as well. I was lucky to be raised in an environment where my different forms of language didn’t differ too much from each other: I often found myself speaking to my friends about a movie I saw in the same way I would analyze a poem in class, or telling my parents about my day in the same emphatic tone I would use with my friends. This is largely not the case for my students. Many of them struggle to use Standard English in the classroom because it is so distant from the language they speak at home and with their friends. For them, code switching is a skill they, unfortunately, have to develop in order to be successful in a traditional school system. I say unfortunately because code-switching is a skill that I was not required to develop as much because of privilege, and because it is a skill that requires such a high level of social sensitivity and self-awareness. In the future, I hope that my students’ home literacies will be given more value in the classroom. As it stands, it is my responsibility as a teacher to develop their ability to code-switch as well as emphasize that their home languages are valuable. The Linguistic Dimensions Study challenged me to incorporate my students’ home literacies in a series of grammar lessons. My students come from diverse backgrounds, and initially it was difficult to come up with material that would be engaging and relevant to most of them. However, after spending some time with them I was able to create activities that were highly engaging based on their interests, including a twitter activity where students were asked to identify whether a celebrity tweet was a run-on or fragment, and correct them. Though they found the activity entertaining and seemed to grasp the concepts addressed, I struggled with teaching the mechanics of Standard English without implicitly sending the message that Standard English is superior to other literacies. I believe that grammar lessons carry this message inherently, and I strove to stay away from words like “correct,” and “wrong.” The Linguistic Dimensions Study taught me the importance of pairing grammar lessons with discussions about how languages and literacies may differ in where and when they are appropriate, but are equally valuable and never “right” or “wrong.” I regret not preparing my students for my grammar lessons by first teaching a lesson on code-switching, and will certainly do so in the future. I believe it is important for students to have a space where they can express themselves in any language they desire, so I plan on emphasizing this by providing students with journal time every day. By providing them a structured time to use any language they wish, I hope I reinforce the concept of code-switching while also validating the equal importance of their home literacies.